The young actor found fame with the most acclaimed TV series of all time, but
now he's determined to do better. RJ Mitte speaks to Scott Jordan Harris

Breaking barriers: RJ Mitte was on AMC's Breaking Bad and has a mild form of cerebral palsyPhoto: Matallana

By Scott Jordan Harris

7:00AM GMT 03 Dec 2014

RJ Mitte is a sex symbol. This shouldn’t surprise us. He’s handsome, modest, 22-years-old and one of the stars of Breaking Bad – which holds a Guinness World Record for being the most critically acclaimed show in the history of television.

“Hey, if I’ve got it I’ve got it, you know? It’s nice that people don’t look at my disability as something that hinders that. It shows that people can look beyond what they see physically, a challenge or a disability, and see a person for who they are.”

He isn’t embarrassed by the topic of disabled sexuality. In fact, he’s almost evangelical. “I like to talk about bringing awareness to this,” he says, “because so many people try to hide their disability. They try to lock it away because they think disability is not sexy, disability is not flattering… but that’s not the case.”

Raising awareness about disability is obviously important for Mitte, who has cerebral palsy. When I talk to him, he is devoting a day to working with Scope, Britain’s leading disability charity, and talking to children with disabilities about the opportunities available to them in the entertainment industry. I ask what his main message to them is, and again he becomes a low-key evangelist.

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“To not be manipulated by fear, and to not let people manipulate you using that fear. Even though you have a disability, that does not make you disabled [in other ways]. It gives you insight. It gives you knowledge. It gives you something that someone without that will never learn.”

Mitte's character in Breaking Bad, Walt Jr, also has cerebral palsy, but it is more severe than his own, and to play him Mitte had to learn to walk with crutches. He confirms a persistent story that he almost missed out on the role, not because he was disabled, but because he wasn’t disabled enough: “They weren’t sure whether my disability was what they were looking for, but they liked what they saw and I was able to prove that I can give them what they want.”

RJ Mitte. (PHOTO: Matallana)

It is clear that Breaking Bad has changed his life. “It gave me a career,” he says. “Now I can’t imagine my life without it.” He tells me how fortunate he felt to work alongside the show’s other cast members, especially Bryan Cranston, whose transition from meek chemistry teacher Walter White to the drug lord known as Heisenberg is television’s equivalent of Al Pacino’s portrayal of Michael Corleone in the Godfather films.

I ask him a question fans of the series often ask each other: by the end, was Walter White a bad guy?

“Yes and no,” he says, which is how Mitte often begins when a question requires a nuanced answer. “What he has done has changed who he was. I don’t think he was a bad person but I think he was corrupted. The grandeur of power corrupted who he was. I think originally his compass did point north. But he started getting lost. When he started he was a good man. At the end, he was Heisenberg.”

Knowing that the same fans who debate this topic are eager for details of Better Call Saul – the forthcoming Breaking Bad spin-off about Walter White's lawyer, Saul Goodman – I press for some information about the new show, but Mitte knows little other than that filming has completed and that it will air in February 2015. "I'm excited to see it. Bob Odenkirk [who plays Saul] is an amazing actor."

Speak to Mitte for longer than ten minutes and two traits are unmissable: his optimism about the future of the disabled community and his determination about the future of his career. Soon after Breaking Bad ended, he appeared alongside the Oscar-winning deaf actress Marlee Matlin on Switched At Birth, a pioneering drama series that features scenes shot entirely in sign language.

Many actors spend their careers pressing forward in search of a role for which they will be remembered. Mitte already knows he’ll be remembered because Breaking Bad is certain to endure. I ask if he finds this freeing.

"It's actually very un-freeing. Breaking Bad will always be there. It's a role that I will be remembered in for the rest of my life. And I don't have a problem with that. But at the same time this is not the only role I want to be remembered for. It's not the only thing that I'm going to be. I don't want it to be written on my tombstone 'Here lies Walt Jr'.

"I know I'm better than that. I know what I can do. I will never have a story like Breaking Bad ever again. But Walt Jr is not going to be my best performance."